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HAYCOCK
,
BLODWEN MYFANWY
(
1913
-
1963
),
artist and author
;

b. at
Glyndŵr
,
Mount Pleasant
,
Pontnewydd, Mon.
on
23 Mar. 1913
, the youngest of the three daughters of
James DavidHaycock
,
miner
(known locally as
Jim Pearce
) and
Alice Maud
, née
Perry
(both natives of
Mon.
) Educated at
Cwm-ffrwd-oer primary school
,
Pontypool grammar school for girls
and
Cardiff Technical College
(later
Cardiff College of Art
). Her skill as an
illustrator in black and white
, coupled with her early success with a lyric in
English
at the
Port Talbot national
eisteddfod
of
1932
, where
W.H.Davies
(
DWB
, 162)
was the
adjudicator
, prompted her to reject a career as an
art teacher
and to take up one as a
freelance journalist
. From
1936
her poems and stories, illustrated with scraper-board drawings, appeared in
The Western Mail
and other newspapers and journals. On the outbreak of
World War II
she was in turn
wages clerk in a munitions factory
,
assistant welfare officer in a factory
in
Cardiff
's slumland,
teacher
, and
information officer
for the
Institute of Agriculture
at
Usk
. In
1943
she joined the
B.B.C.
in
London
: two of her radio plays were broadcast and her poems read over the air. Leaving the
B.B.C.
in
1945
, she became a successful
journalist
in
London
,
writing articles and poems
,
illustrating books
,
designing Christmas cards
and becoming a
member of the council
of the
Society of Women Journalists
. In
July 1947
she married
Dr.Arthur MerionWilliams
of
Borth
(
consultant anaesthetist
at
Redhill county hospital
and the
East Surrey
group of hospitals) at the
presbyterian church
,
Llanover
, and lived after her marriage at
Buckland
, near
Reigate
, where she brought up their three children. Despite
increasing ill-health, she continued to write and not infrequently
read her poems on television
. She d. on
9 Nov. 1963
. The four volumes she published were
Fantasy and other poems
(
1937
),
Poems
(
1944
),
More poems
(
1945
) and (posthumously)
Mountain over Paddington
(
1964
). A fluent
impressionistic poet
, ‘
her imagery often touched with elfin whimsicality
' (
A.G.Prys-Jones
), she used traditional forms with an effect which occasionally echoed
W.H.Davies
, leading
‘
Wil Ifan
’ (
WilliamEvans
) to call her ‘
Gwent's Second Voice
’.